Victim Blaming 101

Uh, yes. We know. We can go to a meeting, and if there is a jerk causing problems, we can seek out authorities and maybe get it resolved (although, in the case of women complaining of harassment, we’re more likely to see the problem treated dismissively). That’s always been an option, and it’s really patronizing to bring it up as if no other person on the planet ever even thought of it.

It’s not the issue. What’s wanted is a recognition of the fact that no one has the right to harass others at a public meeting, and that the meeting organizers have a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment, to discourage harassment before it happens.

Why is this so hard to understand?

These events are safe: they are well-bounded, contain security staff, and all the organizers want them to proceed with little disruption. Nobody has complained that there was no available recourse to deal with jerkwads.

The problem is that they are not safe spaces, which means a place where women can feel comfortable speaking without risk of unwelcome advances. You can’t just announce that there are security guards outside the door to create a safe space; it takes a bit more effort than that.

You know, there’s a lot of whining that Rebecca Watson or myself have claimed that TAM is unsafe, a claim that we actually haven’t made at all. To the contrary, we’ve both supported TAM and encouraged people to attend. But we’ve also asked that it be better, and I do give DJ credit — it has improved in the representation of women speakers during his tenure.

But if you’re looking to pin the blame on people who have said TAM isn’t a good place for women, who might be spreading the word that women shouldn’t attend, you might want to start with people who declare that women ought to “expect to be hit on”.

Some people seem confused by the phrase “safe space”. They seem to be unaware of the fact that in English, one word in context can modify the meaning of another: like “parkway” is actually a place where cars drive, rather than park. But to help out those poor naive simpletons, here’s an explanation of “safe space”.

Oh, oh! I know this one – it is bad because of missed opportunities, and without those civilisation will obviously collapse and we will all be reduced to cannabalising one another in a hellish, irradiated post-apoclyptic wasteland, possibly ruled over by Tina Turner…

I think a lot of the problem is two camps having different opinions of what TAM is for.

So I hereby propose The Atheist Meatmarket, where skeptics looking primarily to hook up for sex can get together and pursue that.

I propose that this event be held wherever and whenever those who want that sort of meeting decide it should, because that’s nothing I want to go to personally. Not judging, just, not for me.

So for those who want to attend The Atheist Meatmarket, I’ve proposed the obvious solution to your complaints, now it’s your turn to do the rest of the work (location, timing, organization, etc.) Take your balls and run with them or whatever the expression is.

[Apologies for not having read the whole thread. Please flambé me to an appetizing crisp if this has been addressed.] [Although at my age I’m probably best suited for a very slow cooking stew.]

First and foremost, I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that we’re all on the same team.

Sorry, but you are not on my team. First, because it’s not a matter of choosing teams; people are far too complex, and there are too many issues out there on which we can agree or disagree, to divide the world into two “teams”. But more importantly, as has become especially clear over the past year or so, the mere fact about being right about the non-existence of gods does not make you right about everything. To be clear, the basic issue is about treating people as people, about affording them the respect and autonomy and control over their body they deserve. And what is clear is that there are plenty of people who happen to be right on the narrow issue of the existence of gods and the supernatural, but who are wrong about the more important issue of respecting other humans.

If it comes down to choosing “teams”, I know plenty of religious people who happen to be wrong about the existence of god(s) and the supernatural, but who treat people with the respect they deserve regardless of their gender or nationality or skin color or what have you, who fight for social justice, and who understand the basic issues and challenges confronting humanity, and I would choose them for my team long before I’d choose someone who happens to be right about religion but who can’t be bothered to treat half of humanity with the respect they deserve.

Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you are definitely not on my team.

We can say that we want to work toward this. But I think it’s pretty idealistic to create this “safe space” that everyone is talking about. If you want a “safe place,” stay at home. I mean always. Never leave the house.

“The Company prohibits sexual harassment of its employees and applicants for employment by any employee, non-employee or applicant.”

Sounds like the idea is to set a “safe place” to work in.

Further down:

“Widget, Inc. employees are entitled to work in an environment free from sexual harassment and a hostile or offensive working environment. We recognize sexual harassment as unlawful discrimination, just as conduct that belittles or demeans any individual on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sexual preference, age, disability, or other similar characteristics or circumstances.”

Here’s what you’re missing. Women are humans, just like men. Yes, they are humans with an amazing organ, one that can bring joy and laughter and ecstasy when treated with the proper balance of respect and stimulation and titillation, but that can bring tears and pain and havoc and shame when misused or abused.

I am talking, of course, about the human brain, perhaps the most amazing product of evolution. Unfortunately, too many men seem to forget that women have one, and focus instead on the other organs. What you don’t seem to realize is that unless and until you engage and stimulate the brain, you can’t really share in the other parts. And even if you do engage and stimulate the brain, you aren’t entitled to the rest.

Where did this idea come from that men have some sort of absolute right to push their sexual interest on strangers?

Patriarchy — male privilege and self-entitlement.

karlvonmarx:

Basically, this is what I see here: Men, if you’re interested in a girl sexually – too bad.

Jesus Harold Christ, somebody call the wahmbulence! Karlvonmarx’s boner is in a state of distress! All is not well in Viagraland! Women aren’t willing to risk pregnancies they don’t want/can’t tolerate just to satisfy some self-entitled wank-sack’s “needs” because….wait for it…it’s OUR bodies, health, wellbeing, and lives that are 100% at risk in being on the receiving end of some man’s orgasm. Of course, these man-children don’t give a shit that it’s OUR lives on the line in even a “good” pregnancy that was planned and wanted under the best of circumstances.

For all the self-entitled tantrum-throwing bellyaching about their “right” to get laid, I don’t recall seeing a single one of these self-centered over-privileged comfortably off morons in the trenches with me and other women activists fighting against the Tea Pottyers, the Vatican, the USCCB and the fascist Christian Right to keep Planned Parenthood from going the way of the dodo bird, fighting against mandatory medical rape (those lovely invasive and painful TVU’s that women must now get by law pay for as a condition of getting an abortion), and fighting against the state-level criminalization of birth control as well as abortion in the name of “freedom of religion.” Their loud mouths and manly presence was notoriously absent.

And such “enlightened” men claim a rational high ground based on “reason.” What a crock of shit!

Pardon me for not singing praises for an overpriced event that seems to be centered on women being deliberately put at risk for getting stalked, harassed, assaulted, raped and impregnated by self-aggrandizing, poo-flinging penis-owning primates that can’t exercise the least little bit of restraint and maturity to grasp that he’s not entitled to women’s bodies for his gratification no matter the cost to her because that’s what he wants.

I can’t speak for other women but if that’s the kind of social atmosphere I was interested in I’d go to a dating service, NOT an atheist/skeptics conference.

Let these MRA/PUA creeps go to Match Makers — AFTER they’ve all gotten vasectomies, since there is no Constitutional right to force one’s bed victims into gestating their genetic material without a choice and without just compensation. Better yet, let them invest in blow-up dolls since all they care about is having a sperm receptacle whose rights, needs and feelings they won’t be obligated to consider or respect.

carlie:

What on earth reason would there be to go to a conference if not to score with chicks you don’t have to bother with calling again because you’re both from out of town?

And of course, none of these cads would be the ones having to suffer the ramifications of an unwanted and/or medically risky pregnancy as a consequence of satisfying some male’s “needs” under these conditions — it’s the women that are left holding the bag, literally. And this is the argument being advanced by “reasonable” men from the “better” social classes in the affluent white male-dominated atheist community. Real fuckin’ cute. NOT!

I am left with the impression that, after reading through the endless MRA/PUA screeds on this site from all these comfortably off men who live in the “better” neighborhoods that maybe upper-middle class suburbia is more dangerous for women than my own impoverished ghetto neighborhood — a poor area that the more privileged people never stop and never look at those of us that were unwillingly cast down to the bottom of the social heap, while they drive through with their windows up and doors locked to get to their “important” jobs in their cushy office. Yet I can walk to the Wal-Mart down the street with less risk of assault even at night, it seems, than at some pricy conference at a five-star hotel. Go figure.

f it comes down to choosing “teams”, I know plenty of religious people who happen to be wrong about the existence of god(s) and the supernatural, but who treat people with the respect they deserve regardless of their gender or nationality or skin color or what have you, who fight for social justice, and who understand the basic issues and challenges confronting humanity, and I would choose them for my team long before I’d choose someone who happens to be right about religion but who can’t be bothered to treat half of humanity with the respect they deserve.

Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you are definitely not on my team.

If it comes down to choosing “teams”, I know plenty of religious people who happen to be wrong about the existence of god(s) and the supernatural, but who treat people with the respect they deserve regardless of their gender or nationality or skin color or what have you, who fight for social justice, and who understand the basic issues and challenges confronting humanity, and I would choose them for my team long before I’d choose someone who happens to be right about religion but who can’t be bothered to treat half of humanity with the respect they deserve.

Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you are definitely not on my team.

I note that the blogger Reed censored a comment I wrote there yesterday in response to Abbie Smith. Censored, as in, deleted. And seeing that she is now riding the wave of publicity, it may be worth pointing out that she has referred to those who would disagree with her as “baboons” in her latest post.

A blogger censoring comments and calling dissenting voices “Baboons”, excuse me while I ignore, dismiss and delete this one.

Have the men who are there just for sex wear it loud and proud as a badge. They don’t seem very shy while defending their rights to search for available women while here. So, wearing a badge would make life easier for them. They wouldn’t have to search for willing women, those women could approach them. And the rest could easily avoid them. It’s a win-win.

But I realize that this suggestion is ridiculous. I mean, skeptic and atheist conferences obviously have the primary function of being places for picking up people. Those who are not there for sex should identify themselves, being the odd ones out.

All the Badge wearers would end up getting drunk together in a corner. No one in their right mind would approach them.

I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a downside…

Anyway, these men assure us that there are women who would hook up with them, that badgering all those other women is being done so that they could find the interested one. I’m just trying to make it easier for them. No need to waste their efforts on others, the interested ones could approach them directly.

How about an “MRA charity auction”? Invite the public for that portion of the conference (advertise it) and give the proceeds to the local women’s shelter. Put ’em up on stage and let the bidding begin. Of course the bidders would be able to demand whichever type of intimacy they fancy, like shopping together for shoes.

Did you only answer that question that way out of Horde loyalty? Because we are members of some echo chamber groupthink feminazi lockstep thought police?

Louis,

Of course not! There is no “Horde loyalty”! The Pharyngula Commentariat is no lockstep thought police, but a herd of yowling, clawing, fighting cats, who just happen to share a common interest in playing with and disemboweling trolls, MRAs, religiots, and similar crawly things.

Then we abandon the rotting, porcupine-stuffed corpses on PZ’s doorstep.

:D
–

Have the men who are there just for sex wear it loud and proud as a badge. They don’t seem very shy while defending their rights to search for available women while here. So, wearing a badge would make life easier for them. They wouldn’t have to search for willing women, those women could approach them. And the rest could easily avoid them. It’s a win-win.

And they wouldn’t have to waste any time on idle chitter-chatter. Up against the wall, 5 minutes, done and move on to the next “opportunity”. ‘Cause there’s nothing worse than a “lost opportunity”.
–

Have the men who are there just for sex wear it loud and proud as a badge. They don’t seem very shy while defending their rights to search for available women while here. So, wearing a badge would make life easier for them. They wouldn’t have to search for willing women, those women could approach them. And the rest could easily avoid them. It’s a win-win.

Why worry about what others are wearing? If you are a woman who is going but not interested in having sex while there just wear your own t-shirt that says “NO, I do not want to sleep with you.”
Boom, whole problem solved. You’re welcome, ladies.

Hmm. Well, I f’d that all up. With enough work hopefully I’ll be able to make my posts pretty and uniform like all yours. Some tips would be nice, how do I block what I’m quoting and not what I’m saying?

Oh dear. You know what that means don’t you? At least two of us independently think that what I’ve done is not terrible harassment. This means that men can “chat up” women in the right context and thus can be interested in women sexually…

…gosh…who knew?

;-)

Louis

P.S. Okay so that was the longest and most unnecessary set up for a trivially obvious point ever, but hey, we are dealing with Karl and MRAs, they’re not exactly, ya know, perceptive.

rorschach
20 June 2012 at 5:26 am
I note that the blogger Reed censored a comment I wrote there yesterday in response to Abbie Smith. Censored, as in, deleted. And seeing that she is now riding the wave of publicity, it may be worth pointing out that she has referred to those who would disagree with her as “baboons” in her latest post.

A blogger censoring comments and calling dissenting voices “Baboons”, excuse me while I ignore, dismiss and delete this one.

Oh hello Redd ! Sorry, but I won’t be having a poo poo fling discussion with you, I’ll pass. Your friend Hoggle however, who I see is free to comment on your so-called blog, is the resident scatologist over at ERV, so you may want to exchange words, recipes or body fluids(or solids)with him.